Noob question: How to make objects brighter during design
In Blender 2.79 both Blender Internal (soon to be retired in favor of EEVEE in Blender 2.8) and Cycles renderers give you the opportunity to assign materials which have a color in the viewport in 'Solid' mode.

Select the object and go to the Materials tab in a Properties editor (you have one open underneath you Outliner, on the right of the 3D view)

In Blender Internal, simply assign a material to the object. Its color will show in the viewport.

In Cycles, assign a material, and, in the Viewport panel of the materials tab, give the material the color you would like to be displayed in the viewport in 'Solid' mode ... Switching to 'Material' mode will show you the color of the Cycles material, and can give you more control over the brightness of the viewport representation of the object.